It is a common practice to provide a rack structure to organize and merchandise shelved products to customers. This is particularly true with respect to displaying and merchandising chilled soft drink products in conventional refrigerated display coolers. Since the advent of the larger product containers such as the twenty ounce and one liter product containers commonly used in the soft drink industry, it has become more and more difficult to fit many of the prior art shelving devices within the allotted space associated with the known refrigerated coolers, particularly in view of the fact that the shelf width varies from one refrigerated unit to the next. This problem is even further complicated by the fact that the width associated with each product channel will vary depending upon the particular size and shape of the product container to be merchandised therefrom, be it a twelve ounce, sixteen ounce, twenty ounce, one liter, two liter or three liter container.
The prior art shelving structures presently utilized for refrigerator cooler applications have generally taken on various physical forms and have been fabricated of many different types of materials. For the most part, many of such units presently used in this particular application have been of pre-determined dimensions and such units are not adjustable to accommodate either different spatial dimensions or different container sizes. Of those prior art units that are width adjustable, some such units include frangible side and/or rear portions which are easily broken off along weakened fracture lines formed in the shelving members during the manufacture thereof. Once such frangible portions are, in fact, broken off to adjust either the width or depth of the particular unit, such frangible portions are no longer usable and cannot be reattached to the main shelf portion for use in other applications. Still further, of those prior art units which are width adjustable and which include product trays or channels which are detachably connected laterally to each other in side-by-side relationship, all such units have suffered from certain disadvantages and short comings including poorly designed connection means which have lead to both strength and stability problems. It is therefore a principal aim of the present invention to obviate many of the disadvantages and shortcomings associated with the prior art devices and to provide a modular shelving system which will accommodate product containers of various sizes, which is width adjustable and compatible for use with all of the known refrigerated display coolers, and which includes improved means for interlocking any plurality of product modules so as to provide a unitary, stabilized structure.